IMPERIAL VALLEY RAILWAY

IMPERIAL VALLEY RAILWAY. The Imperial Valley Railway Company was chartered on May 30, 1907, in the interest of the Imperial Sugar Company owned by William T. Eldridge and Isaac H. Kempner. The railroad was projected to build from Sugar Land in Fort Bend County northwest along the east valley of the Brazos River to a junction with the Houston and Texas Central Railroad near Hempstead in Waller County, a distance of sixty miles. At Sugar Land the track was to connect with the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio and the Sugar Land Railway and to cross the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway of Texas on the line to Hempstead. Capital was $100,000, and the business office was in Sartartia. Members of the first board of directors included C. T. Raynor of Sartartia, Charles Davis and J. W. Edwards of Eldridge, J. J. McCarty, Daniel W. Kempner, R. Lee Kempner, and J. F. Seinsheimer, all from Galveston; and William T. Eldridge and F. G. Hillje of San Antonio. The railroad constructed a five-mile line from Sugar Land to Cabell. On January 31, 1912, the Imperial Sugar Company sold the Imperial Valley to the Sugar Land Railway Company.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Vertical Files, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin (Sugar Land, Texas).

Stephen L. Hardin and Chris Cravens

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